So I'm currently ASM-ing How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, along with one other ASM and my awesome SM, whom I've worked as SM with him as the director. And since there are three of us while working a with a 30 person cast, there's always a note to take. My SM was all excited about using google docs, and as someone who's used Dropbox almost exclusively, I was really nervous about using a different program for note-taking.

HOWEVER, GOOGLE DOCS IS MAGIC. We can, all three of us, be working on line notes or rehearsal reports or blocking or scene shift... At the same time. Jess, the other ASM and I usually work on the line notes while our SM, Tommy, can update the report or blocking notes or the scene shift plot. I think Google Docs is a godsend, and I absolutely love using it.

Just wondering if anyone else out there found any other uses for Google Docs. Or didn't know about the magic that was and tried it, I want to hear your impressions of it.

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Yes, Google docs is MAGIC! I also like that you can manage the editing rights for other people. Sometimes it's usueful to share a doc like a contact sheet but only let others view instead of everyone having editing powers. I'm not a huge fan of the app as it's small on my phone for editing but in a pinch, it's easy to quickly double check something.

Depending on your use, Google Drive (new version of Google Docs) can be extremely useful. The ability to collaborate in real time is a great feature.

I find it falls short in a few areas we take for granted with locally-based programs like Excel and Word; those key areas being formatting and formulas. Formatting likely being the larger reasoning than formulas. Most SMs aren't doing heavy formula-based workbooks that get under the hood of Excel.

I think those are what is preventing SM teams from adopting this entirely - maybe I am wrong about that. If anyone has done a show 100% on cloud-based docs, please speak up.

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Get action. Do things; be sane; donít fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action. -T. Roosevelt

I think those are what is preventing SM teams from adopting this entirely - maybe I am wrong about that. If anyone has done a show 100% on cloud-based docs, please speak up.

I've done multiple shows solely* on Google Drive! I find it infinitely more useful than Dropbox because of the ability for everyone to be in the same document at the same time (I love to have a chat window open with my ASMs during rehearsal for 'Oh, go grab thing X' requests during quiet moments).

I actually find that Drive reduces formatting issues--I'm on a PC using LibreOffice and other members of my team are using Mac Office, older versions of Office, etc. For paperwork not done on Drive, sometimes the fonts don't match, or different programs process things slightly differently, and so you'll download someone else's paperwork and have to spend ten minutes reformatting before you can even read it.

*=My one major gripe with Google Drive is that it doesn't allow headers and footers on spreadsheets. I do my run sheets, prop checklists, preshow checklists, etc all on spreadsheets, and I really want that running footer (theatre name, show name, SM name, paperwork updated date), so I usually download the file, open it in LibreOffice to put the header and footer on, and print from there. It's a pain, but it's less of a pain than having to email new versions of paperwork all the time and/or wrangle the versions headache that is Dropbox.

One more use for it: at my current theatre, other SMs often have to cover rehearsals for shows that aren't their own, due to scheduling challenges that come with working in repertory. I've made a rehearsal scene breakdown on Google Drive that has the pages, songs, actors/characters, etc for each scene, but also the scenery/props setup at the top of the scene, costume pieces needed, prop locations, and run sheet items. Of course this doc is shared with SMs who are working on the show, but it's also very easy to email a comment-only link to whoever is covering rehearsal.

I've never used google docs/drive for shows before, but I love it personally (esp the less stringent storage issues). How does the "download drive" feature work compared to having dropbox on your computer for working on stuff offline?

Download drive has worked great for me--the programs all function fully and once you connect to wifi again, it updates itself seamlessly. Admittedly, I've never tried two different people making changes to the same document while offline. Also, if your computer shuts down or you close the window before you reconnect to wifi, you can lose your work.

I remember reading an interview with Ira Glass, and in it he says whenever he talked to a software engineer he would always say, "can you build something that lets people edit documents at the same time?" and now he says Google Docs is vital to TAL because of how many editors work on a story.

Yeah, but also think about the disadvantages of having the ability of multiple people editing the same document . . .

When multiple people are working at once, you can see who's logged on and where everyone is typing in real time. There's also an edit history that saves all previous iterations, so you can always go back if somebody totally messes it up.

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You will have to sing for your supper & your mortgage, your dental coverage & your children's shoes, over & over again while people in desk jobs roll their eyes the minute you start to complain. So it's a good thing you like to sing.

thanks - that helped. If only all the borders hadn't disappeared while editing. Argh! And no border options seem to exist (the help file agrees).

I had resized the columns to fit in two more categories, but just as the hedders didn't match the entire document, only that single page, similarly the resizing had to be redone on each page. Pretty darn stupid programming if you ask me.